Manic Bookstore Cafe

We spent almost the entire day today in Łazienki Park. What a beautiful day, and a wonderful place to spend it. When we moved to Warsaw, we were told that we would live "a 15 minute walk from the largest, most beautiful park in the city." And it was true. Wide paths through trees; palaces and amphitheaters; museums and cafes. Throughout the winter we walked in the park every day. On Sundays we went to chamber music concerts in the "Palace on the Water," one of the old royal summer palaces. In unheated rooms we sat on hard clear plastic chairs, gazing at the bas-relief decorations on the walls and the statues crouching near huge fireplaces. While young musicians treated us to Schubert and Chopin and Shostakovich, we tried not to rustle with the plastic shoe coverings we had put on our feet to protect the parquet floors. Then the snows came. We discovered hot chocolate at the cafe next to the palace, and we continued to walk in the park, crunching along th...

I would be remiss in my assessment of life in Warsaw not to comment on the quality of Polish hot chocolate. Three words: O My God. We were first introduced to czekolada na gorące during our very first weekend in Warsaw. The rain and 38 degrees that greeted us on January 30 quickly turned into snow, daily snow, white and fresh and constant. So on the weekend we ventured into Łazienki Park, just fifteen minutes walk from our apartment, which is the largest park in Warsaw and features one of the 18 th century royal palaces, the “Palace on the Isle.” Also to be found in the park are squirrels, many many squirrels, of the Polish variety – reddish, or in some cases quite red, with bushy tails and oddly furry ears.  These squirrels are rather tame, and one of the favorite leisure occupations of the residents of Warsaw is to walk through the park with nuts and feed the squirrels. Orzechi włoskie , walnuts (for some reason called “Italian nuts” in Polish...

SAM is the name of a cafe that was recommended to me near the University library. It is very Euro-chic -- wooden tables, including a long communal table in the middle, some couches, stools and chairs, big blackboard with menu, wi-fi, of course. The food was fresh and interesting, and small dishes were not expensive -- I had a panini'd baguette with camembert, rocket, and avocado, and Steve had Tunisian fish soup. Great coffee and nice loose leaf tea -- as I keep saying with most places I'm finding, we'll be back. The cafe's name is evocative. On the one hand, it could be a person's name. Or, in all-caps, it looks like an abbreviation for something -- haven't thought of what yet. But it could also be the Polish word "sam," as in "myself" or "himself." (Or "alone.") Some years ago I was told that Alexander Men, the evangelical Russian Orthodox priest who was murdered in 1990 outside his home, in his final moments in...

Cough cough cough ... hack hack. My poor child. Somehow on the way over the Atlantic Ocean, he picked up a virus, and now we think he has bronchitis. Not "acute" bronchitis, as he points out -- it's ugly. Yesterday I went into the apteka to ask for cough medicine. Pretty interesting -- the drogeria and the apteka are connected, but only for people who work there. So if you need shampoo, you go in one door, and if you need medicine, you go in the other. (I discovered this, of course, by walking in the drogeria door and feeling like an idiot -- not in need of lotion or conditioner, I backed out quietly and went in the other door.) Separating the banal -- beauty products -- from the serious -- medicine -- makes a lot of sense. However, as I listened to the woman in front of me in line at the apteka , I realized that I was going to have to ask for the medicine; an apteka has a glassed-in counter with the pharmacist on the other side. I'm familiar with this set...